Public Awareness of Copyright, WIPO, June 2002

Geofrey Yu, Assistant Director General in charge of Copyright at
WIPO, said this in a paper “Public Awareness of
Copyright”, in June 2002. It is interesting that WIPO is
starting to find that the hypocrisy of describing a system of
restricting the public as a matter of “rights” is starting
to backfire on them.

First the message. For it to go over well, I recommend
downplaying the reference to ‘rights’. the term itself is
perfectly acceptable, but in daily usage, it has a negative
connotation of rights without corresponding obligations and has a
[sic] ‘us’ against ‘them’ implication. This
won't do, therefore, as we want to win the public and consumer to our
side. Unfortunately, we cannot turn the clock back and find a new
term in place of ‘copyright’ but we can at least down-play
the term ‘rights’. The WIPO Performance and the
Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) is about the protection of performers and
phonogram producers. The word ‘right’ is happily missing
in their titles. And we should take out cure from them.

Within the copyright community such as we are today in this
room, it is fine to refer to artists, composers, performers and
enterprises as ‘rights holders’. But it is poor public
relations to employ the same terms when speaking to politicians,
consumers users and the public. With them, we must use the terms
devoid of legal jargon, terms, which are at least as neutral or better
still, inclusive,conveying meanings with which the public can
identify. So ‘rights holders’ should become painters,
writers, sculptors, musicians.
What goes down well today with general
audiences are terms like ‘culture’,
‘creativity’, ‘information’ ,
‘entertainment’, ‘cultural diversity’,
‘cultural heritage’, ‘reward for creativity’,
‘cultural enrichment’. And when we talk to youngsters,
terms like ‘fun’, ‘hip’, and
‘cool’ will find an echo. We must find the right slogans
too. At WIPO we coined a slogan for a Geneva cultural festival that
we sponsored which went “Soutenons les artistes et respectons
leurs creations.”

In the same way, in our public outreach messages, it is better
to avoid terms like “copyright industries”. To call music
making and movie-making “copyright industries” is to cast
a business which is about people, imagination, fun, and creative
energy in a money-centred, legalistic light. It is like calling
car-making a patent industry. If we must use the term
“copyright” for brevity's sake, let us call the industries
“copyright-based industries”.

To sum up, what I would suggest is we down-play business and
economics when speaking to the public and stress more the human,
creative, inspirational angle.

What can we see here? First, look how openly WIPO admits (among
friends) that it takes the side of the copyright holders. There isn't
even a fig leaf for the interests of anyone else, or even for the idea
that copyright must be required to benefit the public (by promoting
progress at a reasonable social cost).

Another is that the irony that the term “Intellectual
Property Rights” was adopted by the monopoly holders, precisely
so that they could present their privileges as rights that could not
be denied. The idea that they might have obligations as well as
rights, or that their power might be limited, is supposed to be
unthinkable. And who would ever believe that the music and movie
factories were “money-centred and legalistic”?

If the hypocrisy of “intellectual property rights” is
starting to backfire on WIPO, this does not mean we should use that
term ourselves. If we did, we would be spreading WIPO-style
hypocrisy, whether we intended to or not.